Fox News Priest: HHS is “Raping” the First Amendment

In a statement objecting to a perceived lack of coverage of the recent Catholic lawsuits against the Department of Health and Human Service’s contraception regulations, Catholic priest Jonathan Morris characterized the HHS policy requiring employers to include contraception services in their health care plans as a “rape” of the First Amendment:

Any national media outlet that fails to report the obvious raping of our First Amendment rights by this Health and Human Service mandate, is trumpeting either woeful incompetence or shameless bias. The Catholic Church didn’t pick this fight, but it knew that if it didn’t fight back now, every religion would eventually lose, and America would be fundamentally redefined.

Morris is the Program Director of The Catholic Channel on Sirius XM radio and a Fox News analyst who regularly appears on programs like Fox & Friends and The O’Reilly Factor. The statement was included in a list of comments by conservative figures in a press release from the right-wing Media Research Center.

Not only is Morris’s rape analogy a grossly misleading characterization of a complicated policy debate, it’s a shockingly insensitive insult to the millions of people who have been victims of horrific sexual violence.

As the response to Rep. Clyburn’s use of this same language to describe Bain capital earlier this week has reinforced, this kind of extremism has no place in our political dialogue. That’s especially true when it comes from a member of the clergy, and Fr. Morris should immediately issue a retraction and an apology.

Catholic bishops are already concerned about their efforts on this issue being associated with extreme rhetoric. USCCB President and supervising bishop of Fr. Morris, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, would do well to weigh in here to make clear that this language has no place in the Church’s campaign.

I don’t know that Catholic priests have any room to be speaking about morality.. Remove the beam from your religion and then complain about this speck! Besides, religions aren’t forced to pay for anything, employees are.

2) Using rape metaphors about women–the most common victims of rape–is despicable.

3) Using rape metaphors about women when you are a white male AND a member of a patriarchal church whose policies are dedicated to making women–especially poor women–suffer unnecessary pain, illness and death is unconscionable.

You are not being violated here, Johnny. Neither is the Catholic Church. You are the ones whose policies are deliberately depriving women of agency, hurting us and, in some cases, killing us. You are smug, contemptible, manipulative, lying violators and victimizers. And using an inflammatory word to wrap yourselves in the guise of people who have actually suffered does NOT make you look one microliter better.